Search

This document is a collection of papers and presentations from a symposium on the decolonial turn and the future of psychology education. The symposium discusses the problems with Western-centric psychology and the harm it causes to marginalized communities. It calls for the inclusion of locally grounded knowledge and the dismantling of colonial hegemony in psychology. The papers cover topics such as the criminalization of LGBTQ+ identities, the construction of knowledge in textbooks, teaching decolonially in India, and the impact of colonialism on psychology education in the Caribbean. The symposium emphasizes the importance of inclusivity, critical thinking, and pluralism in the future of psychology. Another paper explores the relationship between dietary choices, justice sensitivity, and aggression permissiveness. It suggests that individuals who follow a plant-based diet and have a high sensitivity to justice are less likely to tolerate aggression. The study highlights the need to consider both dietary choices and justice sensitivity in understanding aggression. Additionally, a study examines the decision-making process of forced Ukrainian migrants in choosing temporary asylum. It defines implicit competence as the ability to solve problems under uncertainty and sheds light on the factors influencing migrants' choices. Lastly, a study analyzes how the Philippine government communicates about the COVID-19 pandemic. It finds that the government uses anchoring, objectification, and metaphors to convey the seriousness of the situation and encourage compliance with protocols. The study emphasizes how those in power shape discourses to support their interests. [Extracted from the article]

Various research have been directed towards investigating the behaviour of political parties engaging in attacks. However, this topic has predominantly been studied in campaigning venues while focusing only on the attacker (parties that are attacking). This study contributes to the existing literature by (i) studying attack behaviour in the parliamentary venue, and (ii) analysing the interactions between both the attacker and the target. To this end, this paper uses longitudinal data on attacks during question time sessions in the parliaments (2010 to 2020) of Belgium, Croatia and the United Kingdom. More specifically, I investigate the conditions that make parties engage in mutual attacks. These conditions can be characterised along three dimensions: time (proximity to elections), status (government vs. opposition), and ideology (close vs. distant). The results confirm the overarching argument that: (i) more attacks in parliaments happen closer to election day; (ii) opposing parties are more likely to attack the government rather than vice‐versa; (iii) governing parties equally attack the opposition and themselves; and finally, (iv) the larger the ideological distance between parties, the more likely attacks happen (with mainstream parties engaging equally in attack behaviour compared to radical parties). As such, these findings contribute to our understanding of attack strategies between parties in regular day‐to‐day politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political accountability requires that voters understand the distribution of policy outcome responsibility among their vote choice options. Research on partisan‐motivated reasoning suggests that voters do not meet this requirement. The problem is that voters condition their attributions of responsibility to the government on their party identification. Government identifiers credit the government for desirable outcomes and blame external forces such as the global economy for undesirable outcomes. This paper draws a more optimistic conclusion. It argues that focusing on the perceived responsibility of the government and external forces is not sufficient for understanding whether voters meet the responsibility attribution requirement. It is also necessary to compare the perceived responsibility of government parties to the perceived responsibility of opposition parties because those are the options that voters get to choose from. This party distribution of perceived responsibility is analyzed with original survey data from Denmark and the United Kingdom. The results demonstrate that while party identification does indeed condition voters' responsibility attributions, both government identifiers and independents attribute systematically more responsibility to the government than to the opposition regardless of the desirability of the outcome. This suggests that voters tend to meet the responsibility attribution requirement of accountability despite the presence of partisan‐motivated reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the ongoing challenges to academic freedom in Turkey, site of the 2011 ISPP meeting and a then‐burgeoning cadre of political psychologists working to build the discipline in Turkey. In January 2016, the Academics for Peace signed a petition challenging the government's policies towards the Kurds, following which the government began to purge both signatories and other academics. The purge gained traction after the July 2016 attempted coup, which the government put down. Academics and others were dismissed by decree (KHK) and barred from working in any occupation. This paper, a revised version of the 2019 ISPP Presidential Address, discusses the scope of the attack on academic freedom in Turkey and reports on a survey of both dismissed and nondismissed academics in Turkey to discuss the implications of being unexpectedly torn from a position that is as much a calling as it is a job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including neoliberalism in the economy and politics of western democracies, anti‐immigration and anti‐Islamic right, and failure of capitalism to sustain equal and sustainable societies.

This article traces the presence and absence of Frantz Fanon in the field of social and political psychology. Our work is guided by an assemblage of methods— a critical analysis of mainstream scholarship, a collective interrogation with a transnational gathering of colleagues and friends, and a deep reading of Fanon's texts on struggle, internalized oppression, violence and a new humanism. Through this, our paper is a call for radical disciplinary reflection on why Fanon has been ruthlessly exiled from social/political psychology, the potential his writings hold for courses, scholarship, and struggle, and how we might more boldly theorize, as he did, from within the fire of struggles for justice and liberation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January of 2015 Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosted the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the newly built extravagant and highly controversial presidential palace. Sixteen warriors representing all of the former Turkic empires in full costume were present at the welcoming ceremony. This paper uses Volkan's psycho‐political framework to understand state‐led efforts of historical revisionism which manifest itself in historical glories and nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire. The central argument posits that grandiose or mega projects strategically serve historical revisionism in Turkey, amplifying selected glories of Turkish society to bolster support for authentic and national narrative, known as "yerli ve milli (domestic and national)" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of political polarization, in both its ideological and its affective expressions, has garnered significantly more interest over the last years. But despite recent research on the conceptualization, measurement, causes, and consequences of this socio‐political phenomenon, and some tentative interventions to mitigate it, relevant new avenues remain surprisingly underdeveloped. Indeed, scholarship in the field of political polarization, mainly in the case of affective polarization, frequently uses cognitivist approaches to make sense of the growing antipathy between different social and political groups. However, the bulk of this work seems to overlook valuable insights into the psychology of intergroup conflict, stereotyping, prejudice reduction, and discourse studies. The aim of this paper is to underline the main gaps in the political polarization literature, to subsequently argue how knowledge linked to the tradition of critical social psychology can help in filling them. Ultimately, the article aims to contribute to the psychosocial study of political polarization and to the design, if necessary, of interventions to counter its detrimental consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When advocating for policy change, coalitions rely on various elements and strategies of policy narratives, including emotions. However, past research on the Narrative Policy Framework, and more broadly on the policy process, has largely ignored the role of emotions. This paper argues that emotions, such as anger and fear, are central to how coalitions advocate for policy change. It explores the role of anger and fear in policy narratives by examining the oral testimony (n = 474) given over four legislative committee hearings in March 2019 concerning Colorado Senate Bill 19‐181. This bill changed the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to prioritize protecting the environment and public health over oil and gas development. This research finds the coalition that successfully supported the bill used anger towards the oil and gas industry, while those that opposed the bill relied more on fear of the uncertain consequences of the bill. It also finds the coalition that opposed the bill relied on self‐characterization as heroes and victims, which was a failed strategy. The implications for this research on the Narrative Policy Framework and, more broadly, for the policy process and advocacy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examined the psychometric properties of cross‐cultural validation and replicability (i.e. measurement invariance) of the Belief in a Zero‐Sum Game (BZSG) scale, measuring antagonistic belief about interpersonal relations over scarce resources. The factorial structure of the BZSG scale was investigated in student samples from 36 countries (N = 9907), using separate confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) for each country. The cross‐cultural validation of the scale was based on multigroup confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA). The results confirmed that the scale had a one‐factor structure in all countries, in which configural and metric invariance between countries was confirmed. As a zero‐sum belief about social relations perceived as antagonistic, BZSG is an important factor related to, for example, social and international relations, attitudes toward immigrants, or well‐being. The paper proposes different uses of the BZSG scale for cross‐cultural studies in different fields of psychology: social, political, or economic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a conceptual and methodological approach that psychologists and other social scientists can employ to study emergence. We consider relevant social psychological approaches and conclude that, for the most part, social psychology has tended to focus on processes of normalisation following disruptions, rather than examining emergence in itself. An exception to this is G. H. Mead, whose work we draw on to theorise emergence with a focus on contemporary "affective politics." In the second part of the paper, we use focus group data on the European Union referendum in the UK to empirically illustrate our theoretical points. We discuss in particular three axes for exploring the emergent politics of Brexit: political values, political authority, and the authority of affect. We conclude our discussion by reflecting on some of the theoretical and political implications of our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses contributions that the researcher and author David O. Sears has made to the field of political psychology. He has published numerous books on topics such as race relations, political socialization, and self-interest and the origins of political attitudes. The author discusses papers that were presented at a forum organized in honor of Sears’ career. They examine concepts such as the persistence of racial prejudice among white Americans and the effects of self-interest on a range of attitudes about government policy.

This paper uses published letters to the editor of major U.S. newspapers to investigate the cultural effects of a major national threat: the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It is based on a hand-coded, stratified random sample of 1,100 letters to the editor published in 17 major papers in the United States (544 pre-September 11, 556 post-September 11). The letters are drawn from a population of 8,101 published letters. Degrees of both authoritarianism and antiauthoritarianism, as well as the general salience of questions of authoritarianism, rose significantly in the post-attack period. The paper suggests that, instead of a simple threat-authoritarianism causal link, authoritarianism and antiauthoritarianism are paired elements of political culture that are invoked together in the face of a national threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated reasoning occurs when judgements subserve motives that go beyond accuracy seeking. Substantial evidence indicates that motivated political reasoning is ubiquitous. This is hard to reconcile with computational theories (following Marr's terminology, theories describing the fundamental principles underlying a cognitive process) like Bayesian inference, because these rely on accuracy maximization. Hence, motivated political reasoning is often interpreted as violating computational principles. Here we propose a different view by offering a computational account of motivated political reasoning which relies on the notion of Bayesian decision (instead of Bayesian inference). The key idea is that utility maximization, and not accuracy maximization, drives political thinking. This implies that agents will tend to endorse judgements that serve their instrumental goals even when evidence in support is poor (though agents will still believe their judgements are the most accurate). In this framework, motivated political reasoning is not interpreted as violating computational principles, although its nature is now conceived as pragmatic (i.e., serving instrumental goals) rather than epistemic (i.e., seeking understanding). The paper presents a mathematical description of the theory and shows how this can help interpreting important phenomena in political psychology such contextual priming, stereotyping, and displaced aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While attention has been given to understanding support for the far‐right, there is a lack of focus on the way in which a threat of the far‐right can be used for political ends. This paper addresses this using the UK Brexit debate as an illustration. The question therefore is: What is talk about the far‐right used to do in discussions about Brexit? A discursive psychological approach addresses a sample of newspaper reports containing both 'Far‐Right' and 'Brexit', from the first quarter of 2019 (n = 45). The analysis identifies a range of uses of talk about the far‐right: (1) An opponent of Brexit is called a Nazi by pro‐Brexit protesters, who are labelled far‐right; (2) A lack of Brexit is presented as fuel for the far‐right; (3) Remain supporters reject the idea that a lack of Brexit fuels the far‐right; (4) A link with the far‐right is rejected by a prominent Brexit supporter; and (5) Support for Brexit is again linked with the far‐right. The far‐right can be used as a strategic tool by opposing sides of the Brexit debate and – significantly – the supposed threat of the far‐right can be used to placate far‐right ideas, rather than to genuinely challenge them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The C19PRC study aims to assess the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the adult population of the UK, Republic of Ireland, and Spain. This paper describes the conduct of the first two waves of the UK survey (the "parent" strand of the Consortium) during March–April 2020. Methods: A longitudinal, internet panel survey was designed to assess: (1) COVID‐19 related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors; (2) the occurrence of common mental health disorders as well as the role of (3) psychological factors and (4) social and political attitudes, in influencing the public's response to the pandemic. Quota sampling (age, sex, and household income) was used to recruit a nationally representative sample of adults. Results: Two thousand and twenty five adults were recruited at baseline, and 1406 were followed‐up one‐month later (69.4% retention rate). The baseline sample was representative of the UK population in relation to economic activity, ethnicity, and household composition. Attrition was predicted by key socio‐demographic characteristics, and an inverse probability weighting procedure was employed to ensure the follow‐up sample was representative of the baseline sample. Conclusion: The C19PRC study data has strong generalizability to facilitate and stimulate interdisciplinary research on important public health questions relating to the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to offer an explanation of masochism in political behavior using the concepts developed by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. For the purposes of this paper, masochism in political behavior is defined as any political behavior in which the protagonists willingly pursue self-directed pain and suffering in order to accomplish their political goals. It involves the self-chosen endangerment of one's life and liberty and thus includes a whole range of contemporary behaviors, from hunger strikes and suicide bombers to the old 'escape from freedom' phenomena now on the rise even in the established democracies. Lacan's basic thesis is that masochistic behavior is an effort on the part of the subject to establish law-giving structures where there were none before. In other words, the masochist's sacrifice is a provocative attempt to carve out an autonomous space in the political environment whose structure does not allow it. This is why the masochist's 'victories' will by necessity be temporary and will require constant repetition. Lasting changes in political structures necessitate other types of behavior. In order to provide evidence for this thesis, I will present two detailed case studies. One will explore the issue of masochism in the Russian political culture based on the studies by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere. The second case study will be based on my own research and first-hand experiences as an active participant in the political life of Montenegro. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the transnationalism seen among Chicago's Chinese migrants in tandem with their Americanization in the late 19th century. While migrants’ transnationalism has several dimensions, the focus of this paper has been placed on their political practices, so-called “long-distance nationalism.” Previous studies on migrants’ transnationalism tended to assume marginalization in and a failure to assimilate into a host society as a reason for migrants’ maintaining their ties to their countries of origin. A historical study of the migrants, however, showed another picture: transnationalism and assimilation processes could be reconciled. In order to explain how this is possible, this paper provides in the first part a background on the Chinese enclave in Chicago. Here the paper illustrates how seriously divided the Chinese community was over the difference of clan. The second part is divided into three sections and shows the process by which migrants became politically transnational. First, it deals with the emerging “Chinese” consciousness of migrants, elaborating on how such an inclusive awareness began to appear while they mobilized into a movement demanding naturalization and citizenship rights. In the course of such a movement, they promoted the Americanization of Chinese migrants. Second, how such processes, that is, the emergence of “Chinese” consciousness and assimilation proceeded at the same time is explained. Third, the paper shows how and when Chinese Chicagoans became politically involved in homeland politics. Throughout the paper, the idea of transnationalism is considered in relation to assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The symposium papers show that differences in sources and context clearly matter in the ‘at-a-distance’ assessment of a leader's psychological characteristics. The stability of both cognitive and personality attributes decreases as observations focus on shorter time frames, more specific policy domains, and private rather than public arenas. Despite these qualifications on the use of texts to profile individual leaders, the indices of social cognition and personality do discriminate individual differences between leaders. Because the results reveal significant differences in assessing individual leaders over time with multiple sources and at different levels of analysis, it becomes more worthwhile to investigate research questions that would be moot in the absence of important source, context, or aggregation effects. With the use of automated content analysis and greater access to data from electronic sources, it is now easier to carry Out quantitative content analyses of psychological characteristics and to confirm or qualify the insights generated in this symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that far‐right (FR) populism in the West is fuelled by inequality. In this paper, we argue that three social psychological processes are central to explaining these phenomena. We suggest that these processes are recursive although we do not specify their temporal order. Drawing on the social identity tradition, we first examine how inequality is linked to reduced social trust and cohesion, which has consequences for both low‐ and high‐income groups. We examine the known effects of perceived threat in amplifying tensions between groups and consolidating identity positions. Second, we argue that national identity consolidation is a particularly likely response to inequality, which, in turn, reduces tolerance of cultural diversity as an associated consequence. Finally, we consider the value of these strengthened national identities to those who harness them effectively to gain political ground. In this way, those who offer FR populist rhetoric aligned with nationalism can blame immigrants, "foreign" powers, and mainstream politics for both the lack of social cohesion and reduced economic circumstances of many. We conclude that FR populist leaders not only tap into the negative social consequences of inequality, their policy positions also fail to address and may even compound the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a culturalist interpretation of the outcome of the Brexit referendum. This interpretation is grounded on the analysis of the U.K.'s cultural milieu, which is part of a more general study of the cultural milieus of several European countries. Specific to the United Kingdom, our analysis is based on a questionnaire carried out on a representative sample of U.K. respondents stratified by sociodemographic variables and geographic region (NUTS1). Responses to the questionnaire were subjected to multidimensional analysis—a combination of multiple correspondence analysis and cluster analysis. Findings about the multicountry analysis show how cultural milieus are characterized by five basic, embodied, affect‐laden, generalized worldviews (defined as "Symbolic Universes"). Four out of five symbolic universes consist of a way of interpreting reality by a specific anchorage (i.e., the ethical norm, the institutional order, the emotional experience interpersonal bond, and the belongingness). One symbolic universe can be viewed as the anomic reaction to the failure of those anchorages. Focusing on Brexit, by means of a discriminant analysis, it is showed how the incidence of the symbolic universes (and of the underpinning basic dimensions of meaning within the 12 U.K. macroregions') enables to identify differentially the macroregions with high proportion of "leave" at the Brexit referendum against those with low proportion. More specifically, the high "leave" macroregion are characterized by higher relevance of cultural forms anchored on local identity/belongingness. Findings are discussed within the wider aims of the project and its implications for a cultural psychology informed policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we look at the relationship between European identification and political support for (or opposition to) EU membership. First, we argue that conceptualizing political attitudes towards the EU as a direct product of European identification (a) neglects the distinction between the social reality of Europe and the political reality of the EU and (b) leads to psychological reductionism. We propose that the relationship should instead be conceptualized as mediated by legitimacy perceptions and as moderated by social‐level variables. Second, we look at three spheres of European integration and propose that their perceived legitimacy is appraised through the following principles: (a) normative solidarity for wealth sharing, (b) political authority for sharing political decisions, and (c) collective self‐realization for the sharing of practices. We illustrate the key mediating role of those principles by drawing on data from a survey ran across five European countries. Third, we argue that these meditational relationships are in turn moderated by social, political, and ideological realities and illustrate this point by looking at the case of United Kingdom in the context of the EU membership referendum. We point to an ideological assumption in the U.K. political landscape about the illegitimacy of EU supranational decision making and argue that this contributed to shape both the debate of the referendum campaign and its result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disruptions and transformations wrought by globalization have been momentous for political psychology, requiring more than ever a global outlook that integrates across disciplines and connects local understandings from regions and different states. Our vision is to build on the success of I Political Psychology i in providing a platform for high-impact research that spans the disciplines of psychology and political science, with innovative theories that have worthwhile applications. We look forward to working together with our editors, editorial board, and executive committee and getting feedback on our ideas from authors, readers, and ISPP members. [Extracted from the article]

Abstract: When there are politically polarizing events taking place in the world, can it be useful for a therapist to disclose his or her political views within the context of a psychotherapeutic dyad? This paper examines this question through the example of a Marxist therapist working with a politically conservative patient in the polarized political atmosphere following Donald Trump's election to the Presidency of the United States. Also explored are the patient's dynamics that might have made it particularly salient for the therapist to eschew a more neutral stance. The theoretical and technical bases for this disclosure are examined via the Affect Theory of Silvan S. Tomkins as well as the Person‐Centered Therapy of Carl Rogers. The family history of the patient is examined to further understand the context in which the political/therapeutic interactions take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular accounts of populist movements often point to negative emotions as a key motivating factor underlying their support. However, little systematic research has been devoted to examining differences in how distinct negative emotions affect levels of populism among voters. This paper attempts to fill this gap by focusing on the influence of the two emotions most frequently connected to populism in political commentary: fear and anger. Informed by appraisal theories of emotions, we hypothesize that populist attitudes are driven by feelings of anger, rather than fear. Using a three-wave online panel survey of Spanish citizens between 2014 and 2016, we find that anger expressed over the economic crisis is consistently associated with variations in support for populism both between individuals and over time, whereas no significant effects emerge for expressions of fear. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the nature of populist support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of isolating and measuring the influence of hatred on political behavior by analyzing a nationwide panel study conducted during the 2006 election campaign in Israel. We argue that collective hatred is composed of 2 distinct emotional aspects: chronic and immediate. The core of this paper is an analysis of the influence of these 2 types of group-based hatred on 3 aspects of political behavior: political learning, party identification stability, and partisan support. The results indicate that both aspects of collective hatred-chronic and immediate-are incongruously crucial for the understanding of political outcomes, particularly political learning. We discuss the broader implications of these findings in assessing the impact of group-based hatred on the political process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the psychology – and the appeal – of “middle way” or “third way” political leaders, with a particular focus on former British Labor prime minister Tony Blair. Reviewing two works by British psychoanalyst and Labor member of parliament (MP), Leo Abse, and Australian management theorist, Alistair Mant, the paper examines the middle way idea and its psychological meaning with particular reference to Blair and others including US president Bill Clinton and Australian Labor prime minister Bob Hawke. The paper, written in 1999, locates the middle way idea in relation to issues of aggression, denial of differences, idealization and parental identifications. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid a period of increasing political anxiety generated by the BSE crisis, the Irish Government sought to replace a confusing medley of food regulations with a single agency responsible for regulating food from the ‘farm to the fork’. Presented as a radical departure from a regime previously discredited, its remit would be to redefine the relationship between risk assessment, management and communication. In this context, the paper puts forward three principal arguments. First, that while the Minister for Health and Children was keen to extol both the scientific credentials of the agency, and the importance of shifting regulatory responsibility from the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAF) to the Department of Health and Children (DOHC), what remains novel is the manner in which reform has managed to retain political access for influential agri-business interests. Second, that any reform undertaken should be fully cognisant of the international agreements between the European Union and the World Trade Organisation which extended further a free market in food trade. The agency's institutional architecture therefore was framed with the intention of restoring market confidence without threatening the habitat of those multi-national companies that occupy this arena. Finally, that the role of science (and risk) in food regulation has altered. Rather than perform the task of sustaining order through responsible government, science now participates in (re)constituting order through the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most pressing concerns in the study of international relations today is to develop a systematic account of the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy. This paper argues that domestic politics frequently influences foreign policy through a process of decision-making that grows out of the decision-maker's awareness of the requirements for effective action in the political context. It is therefore necessary to develop a theory that can explain how the political context's characteristic features affect decision-makers' thinking. In attempting to combine insights culled from the literature on political decision-making with psychological theories of decision-making processes, this paper offers a first step toward such a theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work on the measurement of leaders' foreign policy orientations by Margaret G. Hermann argues that spontaneous utterances should provide more useful indications of stable personality characteristics than prepared statements. This paper reconsiders this question for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton through an automated coding system. A large number of spontaneous utterances and prepared statements by these presidents were compared in an effort to determine the stability of their conceptual complexity across source types and over time. The findings support the ability of Hermann`s conceptual complexity measurement to capture robust differences between individuals; however, scores derived from spontaneous comments varied significantly from those derived from prepared remarks. In addition, the trait appears to be stable for some subjects (Carter) but not for others (Clinton). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the spontaneous and prepared remarks of Presidents Reagan and Bush in the domain of U.S.-Soviet relations at the end of the Cold War. The findings suggest that researchers should be cautious when drawing their sample frames, because scores gleaned from prepared remarks may contain systematic differences large enough to affect the workings of models using at-a-distance measurements. However, if the leader is involved in the preparation of speeches he or she delivers, then these prepared speeches typically are as valid an indicator of the leader's psychological variables as are spontaneous remarks from interviews. Context effects may be present for both cognitive and personal variables in remarks from spontaneous and prepared statements, impression management, therefore, may be a bigger problem than authorship in assessing leaders at a distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the issues, methods, and constructs presented in the papers for the symposium Issues in Assessing Psychological Characteristics at a Distance. These papers share a substantive focus on the psychological characteristics of U.S. presidents and a common commitment to the use of ‘at-a-distance’ assessment techniques. In this context, at-a-distance measures raise several substantive and methodological issues, including the connections between leaders and advisors, the value of public versus private rhetoric, and differences between spontaneous and prepared source material. The authors of the papers use two psychological constructs, the operational code and conceptual complexity, to investigate these issues and to illustrate the utility of at-a-distance methods for assessing psychological characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positioned within the multidisciplinary scholarly fields of political psychology, our analysis follows an interdisciplinary approach, linking the study of EU images (from international relations (IR), political science and EU Studies) to the notion of conceptual metaphors (cognitive linguistics). Our research uses a novel empirical tool - a four-tiered model of conceptual metaphors (Zhabotynska, 2011) to assess how meanings are formed in the construction of EU images in third countries. Using a case-study of Australian and New Zealand elites, the paper contributes to EU foreign policy scholarship through the description of a systematic algorithm for tracing the 'mapping of emotions' towards the EU from beyond its borders. Metaphors are understood as a cognitive device for translating emotions, but empirical analysis of emotions is nascent in IR studies. Assessing EU external images over time in an empirically-informed and systematic way is a further novel contribution from this body of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case study, as a method of inquiry, is particularly suited to the field of political psychology. Yet there is little training in political science, and even less in psychology, on how to do case study research. Furthermore, misconceptions about case studies contribute to the methodological barrier that exists within and between the two parent disciplines. This paper reviews the various definitions and uses of case studies and integrates a number of recent insights and advances into a practical guide for conducting case study research. To this end, the paper discusses various stereotypes of the case study and offers specific steps aimed at addressing these criticisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an experiment in understanding the logic of communism from the perspective of political psychology. In Hungary, communism became a means for transforming the entire psychical make-up of a country in a moment of reduced intensity of consciousness, a transitory or liminal period, produced by the Second World War. In liminal conditions, unconscious impulses are set free that are channeled by the use of archetypical images. As an empirical case study, this paper discusses the speeches of the first post-war Hungarian Communist Party leader, Mátyás Rákosi, delivered in the years immediately after the devastations of the war, in an effort to discern the techniques and mechanisms by which the Communist Parry managed to capture the allegiance of a large segment of the population. The analysis of these speeches and their effects indicates that communism was not merely a consequence of Soviet occupation, and therefore the withdrawal of the troops did nor eliminate the lasting, mostly hidden but still predominant, effects of communism on the countries that were in its grip. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many previous theoretical analyses of multiparty coalition behaviour have been based either on one-dimensional policy model or on a constantsum game interpretation. For theoretical and empirical reasons this paper focusses on a competitive two-dimensional model. In this model parties are concerned with policy outcomes but choose party positions both with a view to electoral consequences and as a basis for coalition bargaining. The political heart is proposed as the set of possible coalition outcomes. The heart is either the core of the political game or is determined by a small number of party positions. Under certain conditions an equilibrium in the choice of party positions can be shown to exist. The model suggests that parties can be categorized as either strong or weak core parties, anti-core parties or peripheral parties. This categorization of parties implies a typology of party systems, which gives some theoretical foundation for the occurrence of minority, minimal winning and surplus coalitions in many of the European countries in the postwar period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to show that distinct dimensions of political alienation are reliable predictors of variations in political behaviour, independently of factors such as level of government and kinds of situations. In other words, there is a direct relation between the type of alienation and the mode in which it is expressed. The paper also calls attention to the functions served by the alienated as agents of political change. Variations in the modes of expression result from the following four types of political alienation: powerlessness, distrust, meaninglessness and isolation. Political powerlessness refers to the "perceived expectancy of an individual that his own behaviour cannot determine the occurrence of political outcomes that he seeks." The incentive to take part in politics is weak among the powerless who consequently elect to express their alienation through non-participation. Distrust is a person's feeling that the occupants of political roles systematically and consistently violate specific political norms or the "rules of the game" when dealing with certain publics.

Wealthy countries[1] have emitted over 50 percent of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause climate change.[2] The United States alone has contributed 25 percent of the world's emissions since 1751.[3] These wealthy nations continue to be major contributors to the climate change problem despite their capacity to reduce emissions and despite knowledge of the widespread - potentially catastrophic - impacts of climate change.[4] Given their wealth and ability to curb emissions, I assume that wealthy high emitters do wrong by their emitting. Importantly, there is no direct and horizontal relation between any citizen and the victims of climate change (V).[86] Rather, each citizen has an obligation to underwrite the expenses of their nation and are only indirectly related to the victims of climate change to whom their nation owes reparations. Indeed, I will argue below that citizens of high-emitting nations are in a vertical moral relationship with their nation in the form of a duty to underwrite the costs their nations incur. II THE FAIRNESS OBJECTION The FO charges that holding a nation responsible for climate change is unfair to individual members of the nation on the grounds that individuals will be held responsible for the misdeeds of others.[17] The argument is familiar from broader criticisms of collective responsibility. Like most climate change ethicists who defend national responsibility for climate change, proponents of the FO assume - usually without argument - that a nation's responsibility is simply the sum of the responsibility of its members and that holding nations responsible just is to hold their members responsible. [Extracted from the article]

The paper analyzes the link between personality traits and attitudes of Swiss citizens toward equal opportunities for immigrants. In particular, we examine the extent to which this relationship is moderated by the socio-structural context. We test the assumption that the direct links between personality traits and attitudes toward equal opportunities are strengthened by perceived ethnic diversity. Based on our empirical analyses, we are able to replicate central findings of the research on personality traits and attitudes toward immigrants for the Swiss context. While openness toward experience and agreeableness are positively related to a preference for equal opportunities, conscientiousness is negatively linked to these attitudes. Furthermore, our results reveal that the link between conscientiousness and attitudes toward equal opportunities is significantly moderated by the perceived share of foreigners in the neighborhood. This finding is especially relevant for future research on the effects of personality traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attribution theory, which was initially applied to the study of academic achievement, has generated a large amount of research in psychology. Judgments of causal responsibility, an important facet of attributions, have since been studied in a variety of other contexts, revealing that they pervade our understanding of the social world. The present paper considers the many ways in which causal judgments, particularly attributions of responsibility, influence political life. Examining scholarship primarily from the fields of psychology, political science, and sociology, I discuss how perceptions of responsibility are linked to ideology and how they influence policy attitudes (welfare, affirmative action, abortion, gay rights) and perceptions of international conflict (beliefs about terrorism and war). An argument is made for increased communication among fields and a more systematic application of attributional models to the study of political judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political science has paid scant attention to the way that citizens judge public policy, assuming that citizens do so, or should do so, in ways familiar to academics themselves, depending upon which of the various schools of thought they endorse. This paper argues that approaching citizens' judgement realistically requires attention to political psychology. Indeed, our conception of citizen judgement can be enriched by attention to research and theory in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. That work emphasises that much judgement occurs spontaneously and very rapidly, that it is involuntary and non-semantic and that it depends upon the emotional impact of experience rather than conscious weighing of situations against explicit standards of assessment such as science, self-interest or moral theory. A moral psychology for public life is sketched out, with implications for judgment by politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue that a stable set of characteristics-personality-can help explain mass political opinions and behavior. By analyzing data collected from over 750 people, we examine the influence of the Five-Factor Model of personality on ideology, partisanship, political efficacy, and two forms of political participation. After controlling for a host of demographic factors, we find that openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and extraversion help explain public opinion and political behavior. Neuroticism is the only factor that does not influence political life. We conclude by comparing these results to other findings in the field and suggest directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we show how discursive psychology can be used to show how 'facts' are used rhetorically by politicians. That is, they are more than neutral reflections of an objective reality—these 'facts' are highly attuned to the local context of political argumentation. We draw upon examples from two studies that used discursive psychology to analyse two different political contexts: (1) Islamophobia in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack and (2) debates over Great Britain and the European Union. In both contexts, the analysis uncovers how politicians challenge both the context and the relevance of a fact. The context of 'facts' is reconstructed to undermine their original argumentative strength, whereas questioning the relevance of a 'fact' undermines it both as fact and as a rhetorical tool to be used in a debate. These findings show how discursive psychology can contribute to knowledge about political communication, as well as the benefits of applying discursive psychology to political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we trace the route by which genetics could ultimately connect to issue attitudes and suggest that central to this connection are chronic dispositional preferences for mass-scale social rules, order, and conduct-what we label political ideology. The need to resolve bedrock social dilemmas concerning such matters as leadership style, protection from outgroups, and the degree to which norms of conduct are malleable, is present in any large-scale social unit at any time. This universality is important in that it leaves open the possibility that genetics could influence stances on issues of the day. Here, we measure orientation to these bedrock principles in two ways-a survey of conscious, self-reported positions and an implicit association test (IAT) of latent orientations toward fixed or flexible rules of social conduct. In an initial test, both measures were predictive of stances on issues of the day as well as of ideological self-labeling, thereby suggesting that the heritability of specific issue attitudes could be the result of the heritability of general orientations toward bedrock principles of mass-scale group life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of affective intelligence posits that an individual's emotions help govern a reliance on political habits or, alternatively, deliberation and attention to new political information. Some of the evidence adduced draws on the fact that voters who are anxious about their own party's candidate do not rely blindly on their partisanship but instead consider policy and personality when they vote. In a provocative paper, ) argue that emotions reflect an evaluative judgment, akin to likes and dislikes, that has little to say about attention and habit. Here we examine the ANES data from 1980 to 2004 and find that the affective intelligence theory's original findings remain statistically robust. On closer examination, we also learn that Ladd and Lenz reformulated the theoretical test by using a different operationalization of affect and a different dependent variable and found results at variance from ours. We find it an inappropriate test. In the end, we agree with Ladd and Lenz that cross-sectional data cannot crisply test the short-term impact of emotions on attention and habit and concur that ultimately experiments will move the debate forward. We further observe that ) powerful field experiments explicitly test the special effect of emotions on attention and judgment and support the affective intelligence model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minority representation is an important topic for political science-how do members of a racial majority group identify with the political goals of a minority, even when research documents widespread anti-Black bias? Does pro-Black policy support require an individual to be unbiased, or can such support emerge despite internalized anti-Black bias? This paper draws a distinction between two types of implicit racial attitude measures based on functionalist theories of attitudes (; ) and research regarding automatic empathic processes (; ). According to this distinction, some attitudes evaluate racial groups as attitude objects ( evaluative associations), while others involve automatic identification with them as people ( relational associations). I use subliminal racial priming for evaluative associations and a measure of implicit closeness to Blacks () for relational associations. The evaluative measure captures association strength between a racial stimulus and race-unrelated positive or negative target words. The relational measure assesses association strength between the respondent's self-concept and the mental representation of a racial group based on implicit 'self-other overlap' (). Implicit measures are obtained in a well powered online reaction time study ( n = 1,341). Online results are evaluated against a representative telephone survey ( n = 1,200). Consistent with the extant literature, a significant anti-Black bias emerges in evaluative associations. In contrast, a significant pro-Black effect emerges in relational associations and the two implicit measures are statistically unrelated. Both measures predict pro-Black policy support independently of one another and net of other factors. Implicit closeness to Blacks predicts pro-Black policy support even among White respondents suggesting that minority representation based on relational associations may be possible despite widespread anti-Black evaluative bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided by theories of narrative identity, racial identity development, and notion of conscientização, this paper presents an interpretive analysis of Barack Obama's personal narrative. Obama's narrative represents a progressive story of self-discovery in which he seeks to develop a configuration of identity ( ; ) that reconciles his disparate contexts of development and the inherited legacy of racism and colonialism. A major theme of his story centers on his quest to discover an anchor for his identity in some community of shared practice. Ultimately, he settles on a distinctly cosmopolitan identity in which he can foster conversation across axes of difference both within himself and among diverse communities. I discuss the extent to which election of a candidate with this personal narrative of cosmopolitan identity reflects a shifting master narrative of identity politics within the United States, as well as implications for Obama's policy platform and governance style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that emotional response to information encountered in campaigns has implications for the likelihood of remembering that information at the time of the vote. Most voting models are built on what voters remember—whether it is the placement of candidates on issues, or opened ended responses to prompts. That recall of memory is biased is well-known, but the extent to which those biases are driven by affective response to candidate information has not been studied. Using dynamic process tracing, we examine voters' emotional responses, information search, and candidate evaluations during a simulated presidential primary campaign. By manipulating anxiety and the amount of incongruent information that voters encounter, we can detect the direct influence of affect in information processing. We find evidence that voters are more likely to remember information that generates any affective reaction as opposed to information for which the subjects report no emotional response. However, we find little evidence that anxiety has a special role, compared to enthusiasm or anger, in increasing the likelihood that an individual item is remembered. This challenges a primary contention of the theory of Affective Intelligence that anxiety leads to more memories for campaign information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• For years there has been an ongoing debate as to the role and impact that 'marketing' has had on politics. Yet, it is the case that many of the concepts associated with the field of marketing have real relevance and have, in fact, been employed within the field of political campaigning for many decades. This is an empirical paper that focuses upon the concept of political brands and the impact that current trends in campaign strategy, and in particular the growth and continued use of negative campaigning, have upon them. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, the implications associated with such activity are examined and, in particular, its effect upon the consumer/brand relationship. • Within the consideration of the results, it becomes clear that political brands' use of negative campaigning is somewhat shortsighted; offering short-term gains but at the cost of long-term damage not only to their brand image but also to the wider democratic system as it stands. In a search for political 'brands' that more effectively meet their needs, there appears a tendency for political consumers to now look outside of the conventional political sector. The emergent concept of the 'negative brand' is explored together with the implications for political consumers, political brands and the wider field of conventional party politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much recent political psychology scholarship has examined the role of anxiety in vote choice. This work generally argues that anxiety affects vote choice indirectly by causing citizens to more thoroughly search for and process political information. This indirect effect of anxiety leads citizens to rely less on heuristics, such as party, and more on substantive information, such as policy positions. The most prominent example of this scholarship is the Affective Intelligence (AI) theory of emotions. In this paper, we use cross-sectional and panel survey data to test AI against two simpler alternatives: (1) that emotions directly influence candidate evaluations and (2) that candidate evaluations directly influence emotions. We first show that these simpler alternatives can produce the complex, cross-sectional interactions that provide the principal support for AI. Then, using panel data to better assess causal direction, we find little support for AI, some evidence that emotions directly influence candidate evaluations, and strong evidence that candidate evaluations directly influence emotions. Scholars, we conclude, should be hesitant to abandon these simpler explanations in favor of AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]